Is it ok to make option parts for specific company bodies?

I believe fairyland in particular released a special statement about this and their feelings on it that you can look up.

 

i’m assuming you’re planning on making something for a minifee specifically, so here are those blog articles mentioned:

Forbidding Commercial Sale of Customised Compatible Parts

Follow up on the previous notice : Sorry to have troubled you

tl;dr: it’s fine for things like feet or hands i believe, up to you if you want to try and sell them en masse, but that’s FL’s opinion. i think making a head for the connector specifically is erring on the edge of “maybe not”, but plenty of heads are compatible with mnf and f60 bodies by just replacing the connector with an S hook.

 

I would go so far as to say definitely not, when it comes to something so specific in design as Fairyland's head connecting system or their magnetic hands and feet. You'll notice there are no other companies with those exact designs, and the reason is that only Fairyland has a legal right to them and they will enforce that. You can certainly make parts that are compatible with their bodies in a more general way, such that they would work on other doll brands of a similar size. If you remove Fairyland's neck mechanism and magnetic wrist/ankle balls, they are still regular ball jointed dolls after all. So if you make your parts to work with generic ball joints, that's totally fine.

I do think this is somewhat of a grey area, but only because there hasn't been anyone to actually get in legal trouble (yet) (to my knowledge). If you read Fairyland's notices linked above, it's pretty clear they don't want anyone making parts that are specifically compatible with their special joint designs.

 

If you are customizing your doll for just yourself, go for it.
As for the whole fairyland thing- its more on legal matter of copyright. Customize to sell in mass is a no go.

 

Infringement only really covers if you were to sell your modification. But theres already someone selling neck adapters for MNF bodies for other heads onto them though and they havent encountered any trouble from what I have heard. They aren't trying to profit though just covering costs to help others.

If its something you want to make for yourself you are totally fine. They even say that in the blog for personal use.

Ethnically you could argue its not okay (to make and sell) based on what Fairylands wishes are but in the US you can't prevent someone from making and selling compatible items in our free market economy (relatively free lol). Apple for example can be annoying and not want to recognize 3rd party phone charging cables but they can't stop companies from making them.

It also depends on how generic in the grand scheme of things something is, Overlordu makes very good points about Fairyland specific design. They may have a custom neck mechanism that is so unique to them and they can patent that design. However they didn't invent magnets even if they are the only doll company who uses them for the hands and feet. The idea of using magnets to attach, wings, ears,etc. is so generic that unless fairyland developed a magnet recipe unique to them, that design likely would not be protected as the core element of the design is something they did not create.

 

I don't own a Minifee, but is their hands/feet magnet system really that unique? Looking at available photos it just appears to have paired magnets and (in some photo examples but not all) small tabs for locking. I've seen many other examples of magnetic hands and feet that share the same basic idea (Bimong, Popovy, DoDollsDream, etc). I'm just curious - I still would not sell hands/feet/shoes made specifically for the Minifee wrists/ankle system.

Some parts can be made in such a way that they are compatible with many dolls - even if made with a specific doll in mind, since they could be used with others, it would be hard to see a conflict with copyright. For example:
1) Heads made to use an S-hook attachment system
2) hands/feet with a generic ball joint (shoes as well if the ball joint came with them)
3) option parts like wings/horns/etc

However, if you sculpted a new torso piece for a particular doll it would likely have strong similarities to the original even if hand-sculpted, because the arms and waist would still need to fit. Therefore, selling it would be questionable (but personal use ought to be okay). I have seen some exceptions - someone sold leg extenders for the 5th Motif dolls, for example, and due to the body structure I doubt the new leg parts could fit any other body. But that person may have received permission from the original artist--so if you really, really want to make and sell a part for a special body, you can always ask the artist.

 

My personal opinion: go for it.

Buff made Unoa headbacks that are still fully acceptable to use. Those are 100% self sculpted, but only compatible with AL products, just like an item you're talking about would be. There's an artist in Japan named Kakuso selling male MDD torso parts and Volks hasn't destroyed her yet. There's multiple people designing hand parts for Volks dolls. I feel like Volks would be the first to take someone out for infringement.

As long as the product is fully your own design and work, I can't see the issue other than hurt feelings.